Saturnina

Eris’ skin is sticky with midnight-shift dancer sweat. Her scent is burning sugar, a little salty. On stage the lights make her and the other dancers look unreal and labyrinthine, like nocturnal creatures that don’t need sunlight. If you could cut through their skin, they’d drip bioluminescent ooze; if they had veins, they’d be the metal wire advertisements of liquor stores. Eris’ platinum blonde wig is colored a shade of neon lavender from the kaleidoscope of lights. Blue LED ropes make her hair look shiny; red spotlights make her skin look flawless. Green and peach string lights line the wall-to-wall mirrors. Warm, white halos stay stranded on the ceiling. Eris knows each twist of her torso and reach of her legs as second nature now; she is a professional tease. There is no acidspit hiss from the jukebox; the sound is smooth, wave-like. Slow, electric purrs of the song’s bass hums through each dancing body, each chair, each drink, each custie. Custies—the nickname for the peepshow’s customers—go into narrow booths, slide cash in a narrow slit, and witness a window rising up to reveal a room where all that exists are femmed-up, naked girls dancing all day. On the dancer’s side, the windows look like mirrors, and when the window rises up, a pane of glass the size of a computer screen is revealed. Usually it’s an older man in the middle of the black-painted booth, looking something like a phantom. Sometimes they smile. Sometimes they avoid eye contact. Sometimes all they want is eye contact. Sometimes they come in already furiously jacking off. Sometimes it’s a group of drunken, giggling girls; other times, it’s a couple dropping in to fuck for an exhibitionist thrill. When dancing for hours, it’s easy to make up different scenarios: the dancers are in a spaceship, the dancers are in a magic elevator, the stage is Limbo and the dancers decide whether each custie goes to heaven or hell. It’s even easier to develop a crush. Seeing someone you have a disastrously strong attraction to, naked for hours at a time, can either go in the direction of torture or fantasy. But fantasy doesn’t pass the time nearly as well as masochistic desire. Astrid has Marilyn Monroe’s hairstyle—bubblegum instead of blonde—and is very, very shy. Eris feels like an outspoken rhinoceros in comparison, but in heels, naked, and earning $10.24 an hour to aid patrons in orgasm. Late night shifts are a blur: a hazy occurrence smelling of pussy and alcohol-soaked paper towels, feet and peppermint tea, weed and hairspray. When it’s 3 a.m. Eris saunters off stage. She slips off her heels in the narrow hallway, punches her time card, and walks down to the dressing room with her ass coaster (a blanket so her ass and pussy don’t touch the stage) wrapped around her. She pulls off her wig in front of the mirror that takes up the upper half of a dressing room wall. Her yellow Mohawk stays flat from hours of wearing her wig cap, which is just black pantyhose with the legs cut off. She pulls on her sweats and a purple hoodie, and by the time she’s walked to the bus stop to go home, she’s finished smoking her ceremonial post-work cigarette, filled mostly with Valerian root. Being a naked girl is convenient for the cash, but passing for a boy makes the walk home easier. Eris had snagged a custie into the VIP room. Despite the fancy name, it’s a room just as dark as the single booths. The only differences are having a bit more room and touching is allowed. There was a video screen playing porn in the room as well. Porn star moans filled the room: the sounds of fucking, grunts. The man hesitated for a moment. “It’s different without the glass.” “Yes. It’s more private this way as well.” Eris sauntered toward him and lightly slid her right leg between his dark jeans. He moaned. She grabbed his hands from either side of him and guided them up and down her body. Her waist moved in insouciant circles above his lap. She turned around so her boobs were in his face, her hands on his shoulders. She turned around again and palmed his cock through his pants. And, as she had done so many times before, she shoved a hand in his pocket and grabbed whatever was in it. In the same swift move, she stuck the items in a small hole in the black wall. The man was oblivious and in sensory overload: the loud music, the girl on his lap, the porn screen in front of him. Two songs had played. “Thanks so much,” she purred. “It was worth every penny,” he said, grinning. “I’m just gonna clean up,” she said gingerly, waiting to see what she had scored from his pocket. He got up slowly and left the booth. Eris looked through the hole in the wall. No cash: she never went for their wallets. She reached in and her hand returned with a glass vial; she held it carefully and illuminated it with the light from the porn screen. The liquid inside the vial was colored a deep violet. It was small enough to clasp her fist around it on the way to the dressing room where she slipped it into her purse. Done with work, she zipped up her gray hoodie and hopped into her baggy jeans. Washed her make-up off in the sink and replaced the heels with orange Converse. Eris needed to make a stop in the city. Usually she suavely commandeered baggies of coke from cuties’ coat pockets to sell to glitter queens, gutter punks, yuppies, and other populations of dopaminergic dopesters. If nothing else, she knew she could sell it as a party favor at a college house. But what the fuck was this purple shit? Eris couldn’t get the answer downtown—she had learned that lesson, having once paid $60 for what ended up being over-the-counter Tylenol from a wrinkled man in a Chinatown alley. She couldn’t look online either. People would say it was just ink or bath salts or something stupid like that. She opened up the vial and put it under her nose. She sniffed a little more. It wasn’t a popper. Casually she looked around and took a tiny sip. If she died then at least the bus driver would notice. Eventually. It tasted like nothing. As a general rule, Eris always had a bruise somewhere on her body. Bruises the dark, rich color of blueberries bloomed up and down Eris’ thighs. Not from falling on her heels—she never did that—but from skirting away from a bicyclist. Speeding down nameless streets on her scooter was one of Eris’ favorite ways to pass midnight. This morning, however, her skin was unmarked and flawless. She hadn’t slept. She had spent the night reading one of the many books thrown on her bed. She tried to eat a bowl of brown sugar and maple syrup instant oatmeal. But she didn’t have the saliva to even dissolve it. It didn’t taste terrible, it was just a horrible texture. Slowly she tried to move it around her mouth until she just gave up and wiped it off her tongue into a trash can. At 3 p.m., she walked on stage, legs shaking. A few custie windows were open and the three other girls were dancing for them. Eris tried to pace herself, just wiggling around and rubbing her hands up and down her waist, vaguely in tune with the music. Then a window popped up for her. It was one of those guys that don’t walk in, they’re jogging. Already have their dick out. He looked angry. Eris looked him in the eye. She knew how to deal with aggressive types: simply own your sexuality. She channeled her inner sex kitten, slowly moved her body, tracing invisible lines on her skin. He was looking at her pussy, but as soon as he looked up into her eyes he came, and before Eris could roll her eyes and say, “Thank you, come again!” She felt a wave of energy come into her. It wasn’t the anger he felt; it was pure energy. With each new custie that came to her windows, it happened again. And again. Each custie gave her more energy. Each time a custie had an orgasm, it was as if she absorbed the energy he had just released. Soon enough, she had more energy than the other girls that were slowly getting tired from the shift. And her oatmeal was left untouched. Eris caught on by the end of the shift that this wasn’t a joke. The energy was able to be absorbed in her body now. Even the square of glass made a perfect funnel for energy. It wasn’t long before the other girls caught on and wanted in. Eris still had the vial, and decided to get the most done in one night as she possibly could. The room was dark velvet but the bathroom had only red lights, like the after hours of a butcher shop. Girls lined up in the bathroom and sat up on the counter. Legs draped over another. Each girl had another girl to find a vein, shoot it up, lick the tiny drop of blood, and kiss it back, metallic into her mouth. This is when Eris kissed and fucked Astrid between the beds, side by side. Or, when she could have. This is what desire feels like: black adrenaline slicked through a straw of molasses, corkscrews spinning into each inch of skin. It takes a lot and you still only get a little, but it’s because what you wanted was to want more. No one craves satisfaction, that’s far too scary to actually experience. Because when you get it, what’s left? Nothing was fun until it ran through the full road of excess; nothing was fun until it wasn’t fun anymore. The girls who still had reflections had long gone to work at other clubs. The main stage, which was formally a wall-to-wall mirrored room, was remodeled. The mirrors were turned into video screens, giant and colored to give the girls a lighter, less dead appearance. The girls fixed the lighting so they looked utterly ethereal. Lights illuminated them from all angles like their skin was wrapped in Swarovski crystals. The girls ended up glowing a brilliant neon, as if the light was shining from them, not through them, which it actually was. They danced in black fishnets and tulle skirts. They had completely adapted. Eris spun around, feeling weightless. Naked except for the small lavender undies with the crotch cut out for a makeshift skirt, a silver Saturn necklace, and black seven-and-a-half inch heels. She danced and the box cutter in her hand slid across the pale inner skin of her arm. A foamy line of liquid silver sizzled up, then faded onto her skin within seconds. She looked at herself, alone on stage, dancing on the faded red carpet. Eris knew how she looked from every angle. She knew the places she could sit and look distorted in another mirror cubed to fit within the panels. From behind, the side, the front—even lying down she’d look up and see herself mixed in with the lights, distorted. She danced, spun around in the dizzying mindfuck of each of her selves dancing and spinning along with her, and not one of them was bleeding. “What could hurt me?” She wondered. She fell down, collapsing, arms between her legs, ass on the floor. She looked up into the lights on the ceiling, blinded by neon, and laughed. Eris had since developed more rewarding hobbies and learned more exciting ways to waste time than masochistically fantasizing about Astrid. In one of the mirrors Eris saw a distorted view of Astrid. But it didn’t hurt to look at her anymore. Isn’t that the best thing about being a vampire—to only need one thing? Obsession didn’t hurt anymore: only hunger did. Viens as electric as the neon city constellations surrounded Eris’ flesh, lighting up the city streets when no cars with red and white lights sped through for hours. Eris now mostly lived on blood. It wasn’t too hard to find. But she still liked to feed off the custies’ energy once in a while. It had been weeks since she had done so, and she was craving the seamless wave of power. He walked in especially for Eris. The mirror rose up and the window was revealed. She bent down on her elbows and knees, her ass in the air and her eyes right in front of his cock. “Come on my face,” she purred, licking her fingers in her mouth, wide open and still shaking her ass. He came when she smiled. A thunderbolt-for-spine kind of blackout orgasm. She didn’t smile to show joy, but to show off her teeth. Cum dripped down on the glass. Eris was still looking at it when the man fainted: falling forward, sliding his face against the glass, wiping up some of his semen along the way own. She heard a thud. The window stayed up for a few more precious minutes from the dollars he’d put in before. When the next custie walked in, looking for an open booth, the passed-out pile of limp flesh was all he saw—that, and a group of giggling girls dressed all in lace, propped up on seven-and-a-half inch heels, magnificently illuminated. Published by Pink Narcissus Press on March 19th, 2013 in the short story collection “Daughters of Icarus.”